Hunger news alarming, may worsen

Nearly 15 percent of the people in MANNA FoodBank's 16-county service area suffered from food insecurity in 2011, according to the most recent Map the Meal Gap study from Feeding America, and 19 percent were in danger of hunger. For children, the insecurity rate was 27 percent.

And the situation may get worse before it gets better, thanks to misguided initiatives at both the state and federal levels.

Food insecurity means a person lacks "continuous access to the food that you need to live a healthy life," said Cindy Threlkeld, executive director of MANNA.

"Food-insecure households are not necessarily food-insecure all the time," according to Feeding America. "Food insecurity may reflect a household's need to make trade-offs between important basic needs, such as housing or medical bills, and purchasing nutritionally adequate foods."

The surveyors reached their conclusions by studying such data as poverty and unemployment rates and median income. "This is an estimate, but it is the best estimate I've seen," said Chris Cooper, professor of political science at Western Carolina University.

Not surprisingly, the rate was higher in rural counties with historically high unemployment rates. The rate was 14.8 in Buncombe County, more than 18 percent in Swain and Graham counties, and nearly 20 percent in Rutherford. One in three Swain children was food-insecure.

The situation would be even worse without such agencies as MANNA and such programs as the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. In Buncombe, more than 21,000 households are helped by SNAP.

"The types of folks we're seeing signing up for food stamps, they are usually the working poor, recently laid off or recent to unemployment, folks over 50 having a hard time re-entering the workforce, families with children, disabled folks," said Jason Turnbull, MANNA's Food and Nutrition Services outreach manager.

Those people are due to take hits from two directions. First, the federal government seems determined to make major cuts in SNAP. The only question is how much. The House wants to trim $2 billion, the Senate $400 million.

"That will hurt a significant number of people who are already struggling. The food banks and the church pantry programs cannot fill that gap," Threlkeld said.

Meanwhile, North Carolina has made the situation worse by reducing both the weekly rate of unemployment insurance and the number of weeks for which it is paid. The latter has been reduced to 20 weeks, the shortest in the nation.

About 70,000 people will see their federal extended unemployment benefits end on June 30 as the result of moves in the legislature. North Carolina is the only state not taking the federal money that pays these benefits, according to Harry Payne of the N.C. Justice Center.

In Payne's view, the state has taken the worst policies around and "scraped them off the bottom of the gutter and tried them here. I think it is, from an economic development standpoint, about as poorly thought-out an idea as I could possibly imagine."

MANNA will do its part to ease the pain. So will other agencies. Buncombe County Schools, for instance, are offering free breakfasts or lunches this summer at 13 sites around the county, in a federally financed program.

Threlkeld notes, "The economy is starting to show some signs of improvement." In fact, the rolls of the food insecure have fallen by 8,000 since 2009.

In most cases, however, those who are food-insecure are not the people who are being helped by the recovery. "The people who are struggling with hunger are not feeling" the benefits, Threlkeld said.

They should not have to bear further burdens.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Email this article

Hunger news alarming, may worsen

Nearly 15 percent of the people in MANNA FoodBank's 16-county service area suffered from food insecurity in 2011, according to the most recent Map the Meal Gap study from Feeding America, and 19